Salim Hamdan

It also considered whether the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to enforce the articles of the 1949 Geneva convention and whether Congress had the power to prevent the Court from reviewing the case of an accused enemy combatant before it was tried by a military commission, as had happened in this case.

Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan (سالم احمد سالم حمدان; born February 25, 1968) is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November 2008.

He admits to being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and said he needed the money.

He was originally charged by a military tribunal with "conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism," but the process of military tribunals was challenged in a case that went to the US Supreme Court.

Salim Hamdan was born in 1968 in Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen.

He was raised as a Muslim.

He married and had daughters with his wife.

He went to Afghanistan to work, where he was recruited to al-Qaeda by Nasser al-Bahri, also a Yemeni.

Hamdan had first worked on an agricultural project started by Osama bin Laden.

He started working as his driver because he needed the money.

Salim Hamdan was captured in southern Afghanistan on November 24, 2001.

According to documents obtained by the Associated Press, he was captured in a car with four other alleged al-Qaeda associates, including Osama bin Laden's son-in-law.

Three of the men were killed in a firefight with Afghan forces.

The Afghans turned over Hamdan and the other surviving associate in the car to U.S. forces.

Initially held in Afghanistan, he was transferred to then newly opened Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2002.

On July 14, 2004, the Department of Defense formally charged Salim Ahmed Hamdan with conspiracy, for trial by military commission under the President's Executive Order of November 13, 2001.

On October 22, 2004, General John D. Altenburg, the retired officer in overall charge of the commissions, removed three of the six original Military Commission members to avoid the potential of bias.

On November 8, 2004, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia halted Hamdan's military commission because no "competent tribunal" had determined whether Mr Hamdan was a POW (as required by the Geneva Conventions), and because regardless of such determination, the commission violated the procedures of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

The Bush administration appealed the ruling.

In the meantime, the Department of Defense started Combatant Status Review Tribunals of all the Guantanamo detainees to determine whether each was an enemy combatant or not.

The tribunals extended from July 2004 through March 2005.

On July 17, 2005, a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the lower court's ruling against the military commission, and supported the government.

The panel said that the Geneva Convention does not apply to members of al-Qaeda.

John Roberts, soon to be appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was then one of the judges on the Court of Appeals.

He voted for the government's position.

The military commissions were set back in motion at Guantanamo.

Responding to an appeal by Hamdan's attorneys, on November 7, 2005, the Supreme Court issued a writ of certiorari, agreeing to review the decision of the DC Circuit Court.

Roberts, now on the Supreme Court, recused himself due to his earlier participation in the case.

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Court ruled that the military commissions as set up by the United States Department of Defense were flawed and unconstitutional.

DOD continued to hold Hamdan as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo.

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the military commissions had procedural flaws and were invalid, as they violated the UCMJ and protections of the Geneva Convention adopted in both the US civil and military systems of law.

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

After passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Hamdan was tried on revised charges beginning July 21, 2008, the first of the detainees to be tried under the new system.

He was found guilty of "providing material support" to al Qaeda, but was acquitted by the jury of terrorism conspiracy charges.

He was sentenced to five-and-a-half years of imprisonment by the military jury, which credited him for his detention as having already served five years of the sentence.

A Pentagon spokesman noted then that DOD might still classify Hamdan as an "enemy combatant" after he completed his sentence, and detain him indefinitely.

In November 2008, the U.S. transferred Hamdan to Yemen to serve out the remaining month of his sentence.

He was released by the government there on January 8, 2009, permitting him to live with his family in Sana.

Hamdan and his brother-in-law Nasser al-Bahri were the subjects of the award-winning documentary, The Oath (2010), by the American director Laura Poitras, which explored their time in al-Qaeda and later struggles.

On October 16, 2012, Hamdan's entire conviction was overturned on appeal in the US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and he was acquitted of all charges.